malachite - 9:47 am on Nov 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

Greg, my apologies. I missed the bit in your original post where you said "exclusive access" meant you will be publishing the articles on your own site as well.

While I know what you mean, be careful with the wording used in your negotiations with the big site. Instead of "exclusive rights" have a clause which says something like you "grant www.bigsite.com exclusive (time-limited) rights to REPUBLISH articles first published on www.littlesite.com which remain copyright of (your name)"

If you want to keep exactly the same articles on your own site as well, you might also want to consider the possible penalty Google will attach to the duplicate content. If they have better PR than you, you will be penalised for the dup content, not them.

My advice would be to go down the excerpts and backlinks route and avoid the possible penalty.

As far as what to charge goes, do you know any of the sports reporters on your local rag? Why not ask one of them what freelance rate they'd realistically expect to get for 1000 words, then reduce the amount slightly to take into account these are republished articles. Be warned, journos pay rates are pretty c*&p ;)